My father-in-law was only once in the witness-box. I had the felicity to see him there. It was a dispute about the price of a picture, and in the course of his very short evidence he hazarded the opinion that the grouping of the figures (they were portraits) was in bad taste. The Judge, the late Mr. Justice Cave, an excellent lawyer of the old school, snarled out, 'Do you think you could explain to me what is taste?' Mr. Locker surveyed the Judge through the eye-glass which seemed almost part of his being, with a glance modest, deferential, deprecatory, as if suggesting 'Who am I to explain anything to you?' but at the same time critical, ironical, and humorous. It was but for one brief moment; the eyeglass dropped, and there came the mournful answer, as from a man baffled at all points: 'No, my lord; I should find it impossible!' The Judge grunted a ready, almost a cheerful, assent.
Properly to describe Mr. Locker, you ought to be able to explain both to judge and jury what you mean by taste. He sometimes seemed to me to be all taste. Whatever subject he approached—was it the mystery of religion, or the moralities of life, a poem or a print, a bit of old china or a human being—whatever it might be, it was along the avenue of taste that he gently made his way up to it. His favourite word of commendation was pleasing, and if he ever brought himself to say (and he was not a man who scattered his judgments, rather was he extremely reticent of them) of a man, and still more of a woman, that he or she was unpleasing, you almost shuddered at the fierceness of the condemnation, knowing, as all Locker's intimate friends could not help doing, what the word meant to him. 'Attractive' was another of his critical instruments. He meets Lord Palmerston, and does not find him 'attractive' (My Confidences, p. 155).
This is a temperament which when cultivated, as it was in Mr. Locker's case, by a life-long familiarity with beautiful things in all the arts and crafts, is apt to make its owner very susceptible to what some stirring folk may not unjustly consider the trifles of life. Sometimes Locker might seem to overlook the dominant features, the main object of the existence, either of a man or of some piece of man's work, in his sensitively keen perception of the beauty, or the lapse from beauty, of some trait of character or bit of workmanship. This may have been so. Mr. Locker was more at home, more entirely his own delightful self, when he was calling your attention to some humorous touch in one of Bewick's tail-pieces, or to some plump figure in a group by his favourite Stothard than when handling a Michael Angelo drawing or an amazing Blake. Yet, had it been his humour, he could have played the showman to Michael Angelo and Blake at least as well as to Bewick, Stothard, or Chodowiecki. But a modesty, marvellously mingled with irony, was of the very essence of his nature. No man expatiated less. He never expounded anything in his born days; he very soon wearied of those he called 'strong' talkers. His critical method was in a conversational manner to direct your attention to something in a poem or a picture, to make a brief suggestion or two, perhaps to apply an epithet, and it was all over, but your eyes were opened. Rapture he never professed, his tones were never loud enough to express enthusiasm, but his enjoyment of what he considered good, wherever he found it—and he was regardless of the set judgments of the critics—was most intense and intimate. His feeling for anything he liked was fibrous: he clung to it. For all his rare books and prints, if he liked a thing he was very tolerant of its format. He would cut a drawing out of a newspaper, frame it, hang it up, and be just as tender towards it as if it were an impression with the unique remarque.
Mr. Locker had probably inherited his virtuoso's whim from his ancestors. His great-grandfather was certified by Johnson in his life of Addison to be a gentleman 'eminent for curiosity and literature,' and though his grandfather, the Commodore, who lives for ever in our history as the man who taught Nelson the lesson that saved an Empire—'Lay a Frenchman close, and you will beat him'—was no collector, his father, Edward Hawke Locker, though also a naval man, was not only the friend of Sir Walter Scott, but a most judicious buyer of pictures, prints, and old furniture.
Frederick Locker was born in 1821, in Greenwich Hospital, where Edward Hawke Locker was Civil Commissioner. His mother was the daughter of one of the greatest book-buyers of his time, a man whose library it took nine days to disperse—the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, the friend and opponent of George Washington, an ecclesiastic who might have been first Bishop of Edinburgh, but who died a better thing, the Vicar of Epsom.
Frederick Locker grew up among pretty things in the famous hospital. Water-colours by Lawrence, Prout, Girtin, Turner, Chinnery, Paul Sandby, Cipriani, and other masters; casts after Canova; mezzotints after Sir Joshua; Hogarth's famous picture of David Garrick and his wife, now well hung in Windsor Castle, were about him, and early attracted his observant eye. Yet the same things were about his elder brother Arthur, an exceedingly clever fellow, who remained quite curiously impervious to the impressiveness of pretty things all his days.
Locker began collecting on his own account after his marriage, in 1850, to a daughter of Lord Byron's enemy, the Lord Elgin, who brought the marbles from Athens to Bloomsbury. His first object, at least so he thought, was to make his rooms pretty. From the beginning of his life as a connoisseur he spared himself no pains, often trudging miles, when not wanted at the Admiralty Office, in search of his prey. If any mercantile-minded friend ever inquired what anything had cost, he would be answered with a rueful smile, 'Much shoe leather.' He began with old furniture, china, and bric-à-brac, which ere long somewhat inconveniently filled his small rooms. Prices rose, and means in those days were as small as the rooms. No more purchases of Louis Seize and blue majolica and Palissy ware could be made. Drawings by the old masters and small pictures were the next objects of the chase. Here again the long purses were soon on his track, and the pursuit had to be abandoned, but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter.
I dare not say Mr. Locker had all the characteristics of a great collector, or that he was entirely free from the whimsicalities of the tribe of connoisseurs, but he was certainly endowed with the chief qualifications for the pursuit of rarities, and remained clear of the unpleasant vices that so often mar men's most innocent avocations. Mr. Locker always knew what he wanted and what he did not want, and never could be persuaded to take the one for the other; he did not grow excited in the presence of the quarry; he had patience to wait, and to go on waiting, and he seldom lacked courage to buy.
He rode his own hobby-horse, never employing experts as buyers. For quantity he had no stomach. He shrank from numbers. He was not a Bodleian man; he had not the sinews to grapple with libraries. He was the connoisseur throughout. Of the huge acquisitiveness of a Heber or a Huth he had not a trace. He hated a crowd, of whatsoever it was composed. He was apt to apologize for his possessions, and to depreciate his tastes. As for boasting of a treasure, he could as easily have eaten beef at breakfast.
So delicate a spirit, armed as it was for purposes of defence with a rare gift of irony and a very shrewd insight into the weaknesses and noisy falsettos of life, was sure to be misunderstood. The dull and coarse witted found Locker hard to make out. He struck them as artificial and elaborate, perhaps as frivolous, and yet they felt uneasy in his company lest there should be a lurking ridicule behind his quiet, humble demeanour. There was, indeed, always an element of mockery in Locker's humility.